Easy Health Fix 101 in 100 Words: Why only H20 counts as Water

The simplest thing we can do to improve health is to drink more water.

Why?

Because your body cannot digest and absorb nutrients in an effective manner without ensuring that food is moving through the gastrointestinal track from top to bottom in about 18-24 hours. If you want to know how to test for transit time, check this prior post out for the section on Oral-Fecal Transit Time (OFTT). When food moves too quickly, it doesn’t get broken down properly and can’t be absorbed well – check your stool for undigested bits of food if you think this might be the case for you. More commonly, however, is that the transit time is very long which is what we call constipation.

Constipation causes food to sit and stagnate in your intestines where toxic waste that should be long gone has a chance to mess up your bacterial balance, irritate the intestinal cells, and cause inflammation. This is how chronic disease starts.

The easiest way to avoid constipation is to, for real, just drink more water. 8-10 cups a day. Between meals rather than during. Why? When you drink during your meal, the water will dilute your gastric juices and decrease the effectiveness of both mechanical and chemical digestion.

You may find it annoying to drink so much water because visiting the washroom becomes more frequent, but as a wise man pointed out (El Branno) such a complaint is truly a modern-day problem. Even Obama and Madonna (busiest people in the world?) have time to pick up a glass and drink and then take 30 seconds to pee later in the day. Having a chronic disease will be much more inconvenient that making a total of 10 minutes a day to nourish your body with a nutrient we literally cannot go more than a few days without.

What doesn’t count as water?

tea (unless a non diuretic non caffeinated tea)

coffee

milk (this is probably the most constipating “food” out there)

juice

beer

wine

Gatorade

Vitamin Water

What does count as water?

water, from the tap.

What can I do to spice up my water?

squeeze some lemon

place some a few slices of cucumber, orange, lime into a jug and fill with water. Water will take on the flavour of the fruit.

THE DAILY DL (Dalai Lama)

“There are only three things women need in life: food, water, and compliments.”

– Chris Rock

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